James Tutor Interview

Q. Hi James, how are you? Could you give us a quick self-introduction?: A. I’m good thanks. I am just about surviving the heatwave in Poland! Well I am 29 years old, English but currently living in Warsaw, Poland. In fact I have been quite nomadic the last few years. After gaining my TESOL English teaching qualification in 2009, I started teaching in Sardinia, Italy before having a stint in London. After that I taught at a school in Rome for almost a year and then worked for a travel company in Valencia, Spain. I also had brief periods of living in Barcelona and Montpellier in the south of France. Now I find myself living in the capital of Poland, Warsaw. I have been here for about 3 months and I am enjoying the experience. My lifestyle here is very different to Spain, the only difficulty is trying to grasp the language. Polish is a difficult language to learn but I am making progress.
Q. According to your profile, you’re from Godalming in the South of England. Please tell us about your town, Godalming!: A. Well, I was actually born in a town called Guildford but when I was a baby we lived in Godalming. Godalming and Guildford are very close to each other. Guildford is the biggest town in the county of Surrey and is a 40 minute train ride south from the centre of London. Both Godalming and Guildford are typically English. A walk around the towns and you will find cobbled streets, Victorian houses, old traditional pubs, cricket greens and tea houses. You can´t get more English than that! The towns also have a strong literary tradition. Alice in Wonderland writer Lewis Carol was from Guildford and Brave New World writer Aldous Huxley was from Godalming.
Q. I heard your major was documentary film and television! What did you learn from your school? Did you make some films?: A. During my course we covered many areas related to film making such as camerawork, directing, editing, sound, lighting, photography etc. However you may be surprised that we also learnt many other things such as social, cultural and moral issues. There is a lot of anthropology in documentary film making and sometimes we had to deal with ethical debates, such as is it ethical to photograph someone who is dead? Should you film a person who is drunk? These lectures and my time at university helped me to understand more about myself. I made several films during my time at university. One of these, ‘Angelo’, you can find in my profile. It is a short film about the life of a street magician. The film follows Angelo around the streets of London and shows him performing his magic and has interviews where he opens up about his personal life. I also made another film about a millionaire collector who has collected a variety of things such as Queen Victoria’s bed, Adolf Hitler’s diary, Elvis Pressley’s ring, Winston Churchill’s walking stick and several Marilyn Monroe dresses.
Q. Please tell us about one of your hobbies, traveling! I know you have been to many countries. Do you have any recommend countries for sightseers?: A. Oh! That’s a hard one. I think the most interesting country I have been to is Bolivia. What I like about Bolivia is it is very different to everywhere else I have been to in the world. Walking around the capital La Paz is a surreal experience. It is the highest capital city in the world so altitude sickness can be common. The locals are fascinating as they are more introverted and traditional than other natives of South America. The women wear English bowler hats and the men often wear similarly outdated fashion accesories. The country is beautiful and is seldom visited by tourists, which is another thing I like. You have dense forest in the north, dry dessert in the south along with the famous salt plains. Driving through miles upon miles of salt plains with occasional islands of rock and cacti sometimes made me think I was on a different planet!
Q. What is the feature of your lesson?: A. I try to make the student feel relaxed during the lesson and feel confident and comfortable enough to talk as much as possible. The more the student talks the easier it is for me to help them. I also make sure that the learning is appropriate to the student’s needs. Therefore, I try to find out as much as possible about the student to make sure the learning is appropriate for them. So the student learns new vocabulary that is useful and I am able to correct any grammatical or punctuation mistakes.
Q. I’m interested in your lesson, “Learn English with the BBC News”. I heard you send a recording after the lesson! Please tell us about this lesson.: A. We start by going to the BBC news website and I allow the student to choose an article. I sometimes make suggestions and often look at the days news stories before the lesson and look for something that is appropriate for that student. We normally find an article very quickly and the student starts by reading the article to me. I pay attention to the student’s pronunciation, rhythm, word stress, sentence stress and intonation. After the student has finished reading we look at any words or phrases that they struggled to understand and I give them the definition. We also discuss the article and I encourage the student to give me their opinion about the article. I will also ask some questions to make sure the student fully understood what the article was about. After this we sometimes have time to do another article. After the lesson I will listen to the recording and make any notes about the students pronunciation and add this to my lesson review notes.
Q. Please give a message to Cafetalk students!: A. Your English is a lot better than you think it is! A lack of confidence restricts learning, so I try to help the student with this. Obviously each student has different needs but sometimes even the stongest student needs to be told this.